Parting
by Azula Always Lies
Summary: Driving away through the remains of the Truffula valley, the Once-ler's mother thinks about her son. Sequel/companion piece to Once.


Just a couple thousand words of brain vomit in the wake of my first Lorax fandom oneshot, _Once. _This made me sadder to write than I expected.

**Parting**

The last time Mayleen saw the Once-ler, it was in her driver's-side mirror, as she sped away through the wasteland that had been the Truffula valley. For as long as she could still see him, she watched him watching her go.

He didn't speak when she made it clear she was leaving. Just stood there looking at her as if he'd never smile again. He looked at her the same way Daddy had looked at her at the kitchen table in the double-wide, so many years ago, and it made her knuckles whiten on the wheel. _How dare you? _was what she thought now, what she hadn't let herself think then. _This is your fault, _your_ failure, and you look at me_ _as if _I've_ hurt _you_? How _dare_ you?_

They always let you down. _Men, _some women would've snorted, but for Mayleen it was just _people._ Men, women, they were all the same. They never made good on their promises. They teased you, tempted you, but in the end they always left Mayleen standing in the wreckage, choking on smoke that never quite cleared. She had been fool enough to look the Once-ler in the face – so like the face that had hovered above hers in her bed, in that long-lost time called _once _– and believe he might give back the happiness he'd taken from her, but he was no better than his father. _Their _father. People. They always let you down.

He'd looked at her with that terrible sadness, but she'd be damned if she hadn't been as nice as she could be. _Starry-eyed, soft-shelled boy, always needing to be handled so gently. _She could have said a lot of things before she rolled up her window and drove away. _I should have known. I should have expected this from you. All this trouble and it's come to nothing, just like I knew you would. You look ridiculous in that hat._

But no, she hadn't said any of it. She'd only told the truth: _you have let me down. _

There was silence in the RV as it rumbled over the craggy, grassless landscape, weaving through a maze of Truffula stumps. It wasn't a comfortable silence, but Mayleen didn't think she could stand anything louder than the racket in her head. Once, Brett or Chet – she wasn't sure which; did it matter? – cleared his throat, said _Mom? You okay? _She just snarled _shut up._

_Favorite child. _She'd almost made herself laugh. As if any of them were worth any more than the others. Maybe she didn't regard the twins with the same bitterness with which she regarded the Once-ler – maybe she would never resent anyone the way she resented him – but Mayleen had kept the promise she'd made herself during her first pregnancy. She didn't love anyone. If anything, Oncie should've counted himself lucky; the contempt she felt for him was stronger than anything she'd ever felt for his brothers.

She remembered telling Grizelda and Ubb she was pregnant again, when Oncie was four and she just barely eighteen. That was back when she used to go into town a lot, whenever she could finagle a babysitter. She'd pick a bar and spend the night chatting up older men, drinking on their dime, and by one or two in the morning she'd be pleasantly plastered and ready for a roll in the hay with the next guy who offered her a ride to his place.

Mayleen would never forget Oncie's father, as badly as she often wanted to, but she didn't know which of those nights had seen her carelessness catching up with her. She didn't even remember most of them. For all she knew – or honestly, cared – the twins' father was Bigfoot.

_Again, Mayleen? _was all Grizelda had said, shaking her head in sync with her obsequious husband. _Classy broad, my sister, _she snorted to him. _Classy broad. _

Mayleen frowned and reached down to pull Oncie into her lap, touching his cheek – half-patting, half-swatting – to turn his attention from the plastic knitting needles in his hands. _You hear that, Oncie? _she cooed. _Aunt Grizelda's jealous. She's jealous because she's like a cactus inside, all tough and prickly, so all the little angels in Heaven come down to Mama's belly instead of hers. That's why you'll never have a cousin._

Oncie nodded, said _okay, Mama, _and scrambled down off her lap, to get back to fiddling with those damned needles. Grizelda laughed. _Jealous of _that_? You better lay off the sauce, Mayleen; I think you're still sloshed from last night. _

For a little while, Mayleen had been able to prove her wrong – all the cruel things Grizelda had ever said about her, wrong. For a little while, her sister had finally been indebted to her, had to be _nice _to her, because Oncie was_ her_ son and he would do anything for her. If she asked, he would make Grizelda his maid, have her scrub the toilets with her toothbrush, dump her out with the shloppity-shlop and the offal of the trees; they all knew it. Everything he had – his money, his power, his worth – was Mayleen's in turn.

But as she'd climbed into the RV, Grizelda had shoved Mayleen aside, grunting _I knew it wouldn't last. _There wasn't a thing Mayleen could say. _'How bad could it be?' you said, _she could have snapped before she rolled up the window. _Well, she knew. She asked me if _I_ knew, in the car on the way to the hospital, and I thought I did but I could never have imagined, Oncie, I could _never_ have imagined. _

Far across the valley, Mayleen could still see her son's silhouette in the mirror, as she had once – oh, the word still made her sick with longing, made her hate him all the more every time she spoke his name – seen Daddy's in her doorway. She feared, for a moment, that she might never stop seeing it. That she would never get far enough away.

She thought about how he was sometimes called _the _Once-ler, especially during the golden age of his empire, when it had seemed more regal a prefix than _Mr._ She didn't remember what was actually on his birth certificate – didn't _want_ to remember anything about his birth – but she thought it must be lonely, being called _the_ anything. It implied singularity—or maybe the word was _detachment_. _The one and only _became _the only one._

_Good, _she thought with renewed fire, tightening her grip on the wheel. _Good! Be alone, then, for the rest of your wretched life. I was never more alone than when I was carrying you._

It occurred to her that if she never saw him again, he would never know the truth – the truth about his father, about her shame. She had never told him. When he'd asked as a child, she told him the same thing she told Brett and Chet, in a sickly-sweet voice that felt like a throat full of cough syrup: _babies are little angels from Heaven, Oncie. Jesus gave you to me, and that's all you need to know. _

When he got older and stopped buying that, Mayleen would glare at him, and say, _a woman's business is a woman's business. Don't you know better than to ask me things like that? _And so he didn't know. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

She would've liked to have told him, as a parting blow. She knew him well enough to know it would destroy him. Knowing he was the product of criminal congress, an inbred pretzel of genetics who should have died in her womb – it would be the cherry on top of all his failure, all his foolishness, and he would deserve it. She would have savored the sight of his face falling like the last Truffula tree, like all of her hopes when it hit the ground.

But she couldn't tell him. She couldn't say it out loud, no more now than ever, and it wasn't out of love for her son. It was probably the kindest thing she'd ever done for him, keeping Daddy's secret, but she didn't do it out of kindness; she did it out of weakness, out of grief. Speaking the truth aloud would have been like speaking the name of one beloved and buried – it would have shattered her, freed all the pain she'd locked away, and she wouldn't have been able to bear it. She'd spent enough time weeping over the ashes of the past.

She told herself it was all right to leave well enough alone. At least now, he knew how it felt to lose everything.

For as long as Mayleen could still see the Once-ler, she watched him watching her go. When they cleared a hill and he slipped out of sight, she took a deep breath, and refocused her eyes on the horizon. _Goodbye, my brother, _she said to him in her head_. Goodbye, my son. If we're lucky, we'll never meet again. _


End file.
